virtue, by HIM who is to pass the definitive sentence on the characters of men.

Among the many prejudices which the young and the gay entertain against religion, one is, that it is the declared enemy to wit and genius. But, says one of its wittiest champions,*"Piety enjoins no man to be dull:" and it will be found, on a fair inquiry, that though it cannot be denied that irreligion has had able men for its advocates, yet they have never been the most able. Nor can any learned profession, any department in letters or in science, produce a champion on the side of unbelief, but Christianity has a still greater name to oppose to it, philosophers themselves being judges.

He who studied the book of nature with a scrutiny which has scarcely been permitted to any other mortal eye, was deeply learned in the book of God. + And the ablest writer on the intellect of man, has left one of the ablest treatises on the reasonableness of Christianity. This essay of Mr. Locke on the Human Understanding, will stand up to latest ages, as a monument of wisdom; while Hume's posthumous work, the Essay on Suicide, which had excited such large expectations, has been long since forgotten. ‡

* Dr. South.

+ Sir Isaac Newton.

The Essay on Suicide was published soon after Mr. Hume's death. It might mortify his liberal mind (if matter and motion were capable of consciousness) to learn, that this his dying legacy, the last concentrated effect of his genius and his principles, sent from the grave as it were, by a man so justly renowned in other branches of literature, produced no sensation on the public mind. And that the pre

cious information that every man had a right to be his own executioner, was considered as a privilege so little desirable, that it probably had not the glory of converting one cross road into a cemetery. It is to the credit of this country that fewer copies of this work were sold than perhaps ever was the case with a writer of so much eminence. A more impotent act of wickedness has seldom been achieved, or

Pascal has proved that as much rhetoric, and logic too, may be shewn in defending revelation, as in attacking it. His geometrical spirit was not likely to take up with any proofs but such as came as near to demonstration as the nature of the subject would admit. Erasmus, in his writings on the Ignorance of the Monks, and the Provincial Letters on the Fallacies of the Jesuits, while they exhibit as entire a freedom from bigotry, exhibit also as much pointed wit, and as much sound reasoning, as can be found in the whole mass of modern philosophy.*

But while the young adopt the opinion from one class of writers, that religious men are weak men, they aquire from another class a notion that they are ridiculous. And this opinion, by mixing itself with their common notions, and deriving itself from their very amusements, is the more mischievous, as it is imbibed without suspicion, and entertained without resistance.

One common medium through which they take this false view, is, those favourite works of wit and humour, so captivating to youthful imaginations, where no small part of the author's success perhaps has been owing to his dexterously introducing a pious character with so many virtues, that it is impossible not to love him; yet tinctured with so many absurone which has had the glory of making fewer persons wicked or miserable. That cold and cheerless oblivion which he held out as a refuge to beings who had solaced themselves with the soothing hope of immortality, has, by a memorable retribution, overshadowed his last labour; the Essay on Suicide being already as much forgotten as he promised the best men that they themselves would be. And this favourite work became at once a prey to that forgetfulness to which he had consigned the whole human race.

*Blaise Pascal, born at Clermont in Auvergne, in 1623, and died at Paris, in 1662. Few works have been more popular than his "Lettres Provinciales," written to ridicule the Jesuits. Pascal has been styled "Le Grand Athlète du Christianisme."

dities, that it is equally impossible not to laugh at him. The reader's memory will furnish him with too many instances of what is here meant. The slightest touches of a witty malice can make the best character ridiculous. It is effected by any little awkwardness, absence of mind, an obsolete phrase, a formal pronunciation, a peculiarity of gesture. Or if such a character be brought, by unsuspecting honesty and credulous goodness, into some foolish scrape, it will stamp on him an impression of ridicule so indelible, that all his worth shall not be able to efface it: and the young, who do not always separate their ideas very carefully, shall ever after, by this early and false association, conceive of piety as having something essentially ridiculous in itself.*

But one of the most infallible arts by which the inexperienced are engaged on the side of irreligion, is that popular air of candour, good-nature, and toleration, which it so invariably puts on. While sincere piety is often accused of moroseness and severity, because it cannot hear the doctrines on which it founds its eternal hopes derided without emotion; indifference and unbelief purchase the praise of candour at an easy price, because they neither suffer grief nor express indignation at hearing the most awful truths ridiculed, or the most solemn obligations set at nought. They do not engage on equal terms. The infidel appears good-humoured from his very levity; but the Christian cannot jest on subjects which involve his everlasting salvation.

The scoffers whom young people hear talk, and the books they hear quoted, falsely charge their own injurious opinions on Christianity, and then unjustly accuse her of being the monster they hav● made. They dress her up with the sword of persecu

*The author seems to have had Fielding in her eye here. The character of Parson Adams is in point.-ED.

tion in one hand, and the flames of intolerance in the other; and then ridicule the sober-minded for worshipping an idol which their misrepresentation has rendered as malignant as Moloch. In the mean time, they affect to seize on benevolence with exclusive appropriation as their own cardinal virtue, and to accuse of a bigoted cruelty, that narrow spirit which points out the perils of licentiousness, and the terrors of a future account. And yet this benevolence, with all its tender mercies, is not afraid nor ashamed to endeavour at snatching away from humble piety the comfort of a present hope, and the bright prospect of a felicity that shall have no end. It does not, however, seem a very probable means of increasing the stock of human happiness, to plunder mankind of that principle, by the destruction of which friendship is robbed of its bond, society of its security, patience of its motive, morality of its foundation, integrity of its reward, sorrow of its consolation, life of its balm, and death of its support.*

It will not perhaps be one of the meanest advantages of a better state, that, as the will shall be reformed, so the judgment shall be rectified; that "evil shall no more be called good;" nor the "churl, liberal;" nor the plunderer of our best possession, our principles, benevolent. Then it will be evident that greater injury could not be done to truth, nor

* Young persons too are liable to be misled by that extreme disingenuousness of the new philosophers, when writing on every thing and person connected with revealed religion. These authors often quote satirical poets as grave historical authorities; for instance, because Juvenal has said that the Jews were so narrow-minded that they refused to shew a spring of water, or the right road, to an inquiring` traveller who was not of their religion, I make little doubt, but many an ignorant freethinker has actually gone away with the belief that such good-natured acts of information were actually forbidden by the law of Moses.

greater violence to language, than by attempting to wrest from Christianity that benevolence which is in fact her most appropriate and peculiar attribute. "A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another." If benevolence be "good will to men," it was that which angelic messengers were not thought too high to announce, nor a much higher being than angels too great to teach by his example, and to illustrate by his death. It was the criterion, the very watch-word, as it were, by which he intended his religion and his followers should be distinguished. By this shall all men know that ye are my diseiples, if ye have love one to another." Besides, it is the very genius of Christianity to extirpate all selfishness, on whose vacated ground benevolence naturally and necessarily plants itself.

66

But not to run through all the particulars which obstruct the growth of piety in young persons, I shall only name one more. They hear much declamation from the fashionable reasoners against the contracted and selfish spirit of Christianity-that it is of a sordid temper, works for pay, and looks for reward.

This jargon of French philosophy, which prates of pure disinterested goodness acting for its own sake, and equally despising punishment and disdaining recompense, indicates as little knowledge of human nature as of Christian revelation, when it addresses man as a being made up of pure intellect, without any mixture of passions, and who can be made happy without hope, and virtuous without fear. These philosophers affect to be more independent than Moses, more disinterested than Christ himself; for "Moses had respect to the recompense of reward;" and Christ "endured the cross, and despised the shame, for the joy that was set before him."

A creature hurried away by the impulse of some